


Radio Ship

by pinstripedJackalope



Series: TGGTVAV Challenge Fics [1]
Category: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Series - Mackenzi Lee
Genre: Boats and Ships, I don't know how to tag that, Lighthouses, Mermaids, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Near Drowning, Pining, Pirates, Pre-Slash, Sea-longing, Storms, ha that's a tag, it was a dark and stormy night...., maybe? - Freeform, okay listen it's not shippy but the ship is there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22796626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: Percy is a lighthouse keeper with a radio and a longing for the sea, Monty is a pirate captain with a microphone and a story to tell.
Relationships: Henry "Monty" Montague/Percy Newton
Series: TGGTVAV Challenge Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638925
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18
Collections: TGGTVAV AU Challenge Fics





	Radio Ship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [em_gray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_gray/gifts).



> So me and a friend are doing a writing challenge with each other, and this is the first piece of it. The challenge is to create an AU of an AU of an AU, each one building on something from the AU before it. We'll be passing these back and forth, so she'll write a oneshot based on some aspect of this fic and then I'll write a oneshot based on some part of THAT fic and so on etc.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!

On a small peninsula on the Western coast, there is a small village made up of seven paved streets and three dozen windswept houses. There is a general store and a library, and everyone goes to the same nondescript church, though for different services. 

The name of the village is not important, and neither are the people—they have no real duties aside from selling their excess fish to the next city over and making sure that the beacon in the lighthouse is always lit so that no ships tear out their rudders on the craggy rocks below the cliffs. The average citizen cares only for fishing and gossiping—the duty of the lighthouse beacon falls to one person, and one person only.

My name is Percy Newton, and the lighthouse at the edge of the cliffs is my home. 

***

The rain is lashing against the windows when the alarm beside my bed begins to chime. I sit up, placing a hand on the alarm bells to stop the hammer from striking them as I fumble for the crank to wind it up again. As it clicks I pretend that each turn of the crank is a nightmare thwarted by the alarm.

The night is cold, the sky outside a murky, ruinous green that speaks of calamity when I turn to look out the window beside my bed. I am several hundred feet above the surface of the ocean but even so, I can hear the crash, and pause, and crash of waves against the cliffs far below, nearly blocking out the static of the radio opposite me. I slide into my slippers, running fingers through my thick, unruly hair before I take a sip of the tepid coffee on the bedside table and head off toward the spiral staircase in the center of the small, circular room.

The beacon is bright, blinding, as I open the trapdoor above that leads into the beacon room. It spins slowly on its oiled axis, around and around and around, all its mirrors reflecting off one another to create a beam of light that cuts through the night, and the fog, and the rain. I do my usual check, top off the oil tank below the light and make sure the mechanical wick-winder is unwinding at the right speed. There is still a few yards of wick on the roll, so I feel no need to stay up here and watch it. It’ll need to be changed in a few hours, but for now…

I go up to the floor-to-ceiling windows and peer out Westward, toward the frothing ocean.

It’s an incredible scene spread out below me. The waves are cutting edges into the rocks and cliffs far below, seafoam shooting into the air and slowly falling back down to the swirling cauldron beneath it. No matter how many times I look out, my silhouette cutting the beacon’s light in two, I never get tired of watching the ocean have its way with the coastline. It’s a new experience every time, sometimes melancholy and sometimes joyful, but always, _always_ accompanied by an ache, a longing.

Tonight… I press a fingertip to the glass, watching the rain lash on the other side of the pane. I am contemplative tonight. My dark finger leaves a single fingerprint when I pull back. I think about my place in the world, how insignificant I am compared to the might of the ocean. I can’t imagine anyone braving the waters tonight.

Except… I frown, squinting. The beam of the beacon sweeps around from behind me, illuminating a patch of water that is unlike the rest. It’s moving differently, darkness against darkness. I focus harder, wiping away my fingerprint with my sleeve, until…

It’s a ship. A beautiful one, not like the steamers that cut corners around our peninsula. She has masts instead of smokestacks, and sails, three of them, hewn from the very sky above. I can’t read a name on her side, not even when I duck below the beacon to fetch my binoculars, but all the same, I know who she is. 

The _Eleftheria_. Freedom.

A smile breaks across my face as I dive down the spiral stairs to my living quarters and, more importantly, to the radio on one side. 

I know which frequency she broadcasts at—the radio is already tuned to her. Just as well. The village itself doesn’t broadcast anything but Sunday sermons, and I’m not quite sure those are meant for me. But here, now… I smile, pulling out my father’s violin. I turn the radio’s volume dial up, listening to the light static coming through. And then I sit in my father’s chair and I wait. Because sometimes… if you’re tuned to the right wavelength… and the weather is just right… and the ship is close… and the stars align… a station starts to come in.

Biting my lip, I listen intently, waiting… and waiting… until, from the static, I begin to hear a voice, growing cleaner and cleaner until it’s crystal clear. 

“—Hello listeners, my darlings,” it says, silk-smooth and relaxed despite the storm. “It’s been a while. I know you’ve all missed me. A lot has happened since we last talked. No need to fret, however—I’m just as dashing as always. Or perhaps _piratical_ is a better word. My physique is still top-notch, the kind of body that a boxer would die for. I could take down a dozen men right here and right now. But enough about me! I’m just the inordinately handsome captain that provides the music. And without further ado…”

I lean forward eagerly, closing my eyes in anticipation. I’m ready, so ready—and I’m not disappointed. The music starts off on a swooping low note, quickly ascending through the scales, after which it drops off again and begins to plot a course through a melody that I’ve never heard before, one I doubt anyone has. Ups and downs, rising highs and sweeping lows—the notes ring true across the airwaves, plucked from a piano that I imagine is as ebony black and stormy as the sea they sail on. 

I take a moment to listen, biting my lip to stop the smile that wants to curl across it. It feels like he’s playing just for me. The beautiful sound, that it plays on a station no one listens to on nights when no one but me would be up and about… if not for me, then who? 

And even if it’s not for me… even if his voice doesn’t speak to soothe my mind late at night when the nightmares are the worst… even if I really, truly am alone in this world… I’ll bring my bow across the strings and I’ll play back.

So I do. I lose myself, for a moment, in the twining melodies. I rise to the very edge of my seat, wringing notes from the instrument, and for a moment we are one. I feel like this will never end.

But the song must end, and I swallow down my longing once more. Waiting for the voice to come back, I hug the violin against the ache in my chest. He lets the final piano note hang for a moment… or two… before he sighs a dreamy sort of sigh and says, “It’s time to tell a story.”

I perk up, leaning toward the radio. 

“One day, long ago… before I became the dread captain of the _Eleftheria_ , this was… I had a little too much rum to drink. I know, I know—it’s hard to imagine a lad like me partaking in too much of anything. But bear with me, for that part is true, just as this next part is true.”

He pauses, clearing his throat. This is not the first story he’s told on the air, but this one… this one is different. I lean in closer, tilting my head to listen.

“I was drunk, on the deck, and though it was a clear day the chop of the waves… they bore down on our humble vessel. It was one of the days that Calypso likes to remind you just how fickle she can be, you understand? A day when the sea surges with no storm, a day that the ocean, cold and bitter, reaches out with frigid fingers in search of anything… or anyone… who can be sacrificed to sate the Goddess.”

I shiver. I understand all too well. My father… he died on a day like that. I was barely six when it happened. The day he was taken from me…

I shake my head, focusing on the voice once more.

“So there I was, drunk as a skunk, out on the deck, watching the stormless storm-surges pummel the side of the ship. I was soaked to the bone already, mesmerized by the rainbows that frolicked ‘cross the sails as the sea turned to mist under the pressure. We weren’t far from land—not far from this little berg, in fact. And I—young and stupid—leaned over the railing to feel the mist on my hands. One misstep…”

He pauses again, and I can imagine him walking two fingers across the keys of the piano, too light to strike a note. Onward they go, in a drunken dance across the ivories, until…

He swallows, and then finishes, his voice deliberately calm. “…One misstep, and I was in the water.”

I remember another day like that. The first time I saw the _Eleftheria_. I wasn’t supposed to be in the water. God, the fright my father would have had if he were alive to know how careless I’ve been with my secrets… But alas, that’s neither here nor there. What matters is the ship, and the crew, and the boy who was pushed overboard.

“That feeling, that one of hitting the surface of the water, you know the one… it’s unlike anything else. It slices through you, the cold. Your skin tingles with a million tiny bubbles as they rush past you for the surface. The disorientation of not knowing where the surface is, which way to go…”

The boy was no older than I was, and I was fourteen then. I’d seen enough to know the fight was between him and his father—then the captain of the vessel—and that it was about a kiss. A kiss… one kiss, and the boy’s fate was sealed. 

“I nearly inhaled water, my mouth full of the brine. My hair was in my stinging eyes as I cast desperately about for the surface. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. My hands were as useful in the water as wooden planks. Less so, because at least wood floats.”

It was a stroke of luck that I was in the water that day. That my fingers were webbed, that my legs had fused together into one long, scaled tail. That I didn’t think—just followed the trail of bubbles down to the depths. 

“I was going to drown. I want you to understand that. I was _this close_ to drowning that day in the water. But something… someone… saved my life.”

I hooked my hands under his arms, my tail beating frantically for the surface. I remember thinking nothing but one word: faster, faster, _faster_. When we broke the surface, his body was limp against mine. Unconscious. I didn’t know what to do, except to wrap my arms around him and squeeze, to squeeze the water out.

“This part you’re not going to believe, darlings, but this… this is the truest part of this entire tale. I closed my eyes on the ocean depths, on salt and brine and choking ice-cold water… and I opened them again just in time to see the most beautiful lad I’ve ever laid eye on.”

By some miracle, he breathed again. I’d saved his life. I’d never thought of _that_ part of me as a blessing before, but there I was, the only person in the world who was in the right place at the right time with the right ability to save someone’s life.

“Lord, if only I could do his description justice. His hair was knotted in a bun, curling strands breaking free to fall across his face. And what a face… freckles like constellations, skin like the sky just before dawn… and his eyes…”

He came around slowly, and I held him until his eyes began to open. And what beautiful eyes they were. Like the sky above, so blue I felt I could drown in them.

“…God, you would not believe…”

It was like seeing a sunrise for the first time.

“…the depths…”

The beauty.

“…how he looked at me…”

How he felt in my arms…

“…it was like I was home.”

For the first time ever.

“…”

…

“And then he was gone.”

And I turned tail and swam.

“And I was fished out of the water by some of my father’s men.”

And I went back to the lighthouse.

“And I was all alone…”

…once again…

“…And I haven’t seen him since.”

I close my eyes, my fingers plucking at the strings of my father’s violin. For as long as I’ve tended to the lighthouse alone, I’ve listened for the _Eleftheria_ and her broadcast. For freedom. I listen as long as I can, until, eventually, it fades away again, as all things do. It comes, and so it must go. It begins, and so it must end. The static rises until there is nothing left to hear.

And every time, every time the static claims the voice and the piano once again, I think to myself that someday… someday I will once again swim out into the ocean to meet with the _Eleftheria_ , to meet with a boy with sky blue eyes who fell like an angel from the world above. Someday, someday… I will be free, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Static](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850371) by [em_gray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_gray/pseuds/em_gray)




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